UK’s Times Online reports about the non-orthodox attempt of Israel’s Shin Bet, the country’s secret service, to shake off its rough image by debuting a blog, written by four anonymous members of the organization. The service hopes to increase recruiting through this new channel.
The blog, launched in Hebrew yesterday, is a compilation of daily testimonies told by four silhouetted members of the Shin-Bet, identified only by the first letter of their names. Every day users can tune in to the site to learn about “N”, head of the QA department and his double life, “A” the software engineer nicknamed ‘the expert’, “H” fondly referred as the “secret woman” serving as a QA engineer and finally “I” the systems integration engineer known as ‘the brain’.
None of the posts in the blog of these four tech-geeks reveals details on real targets, places or names. Instead, the blog portrays the Shin Bet as just another company, trying to attract talent by talking about work hours (one of the bloggers says he’s at home by 6:30pm), salary (“no less than any given tech company”), and facilities (“aren’t gleaming and fashionably designed like I was used to in the world of high-tech”).
The blog is getting quite a few comments, in one of them a reader wrote: “Maybe I’ve watched too many James Bond movies, but you make it sound grey and charmless.” The Shabak (Shin Bet) official site, prominently promotes the new blog on its homepage. Check it out.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
